Ref Review 2012/13: Liverpool

By Walter Broeckx

This article is part of the series of the Referee Review 2013. You can find links to earlier articles on the bottom of this article.

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After having dealt with the different teams and after having examined all the refs and this leading to the best ref of the season according to the views of our referee reviewers we now will bring you something that will be an easy manual to see who is good or bad for a team.

We will of course bring you this in order so that from now on if you see that your team will play and there is a certain ref assigned you can see in a blink of an eye if this ref has a bad or a good history with your team. At least in the season 2012/2013. And if all goes well we will even try to add the bias from the season before in to each article. And that way you can see possible returning things.

As of course it might be that some referee performances are a one off. But if a ref has the same bias against a team it might show something more. If a ref of course has a big bias in favour of a team it also is saying something about that ref.

A little word of explanation about the graphics you will see. The ultimate referee performance would be that the bias score (which is based on the wrong decisions) is around zero. Alas you will find very few of those scores in the total series. So the zero line will be the middle line of each graphic.

If a ref has positive bias score for the team involved you will see a name (of the ref) and a green line and a number. The bias number for that ref.

On the other hand if the ref had a negative bias you will see again a name but then with a red line and a number. The negative bias score for that ref.

The longer the lines are means the higher the number and the higher that bias has been from the ref. Short lines are better and would be nicer for all. I also included a little table in the graphic just with the names and with a red or green label. This is for those who want to throw a quick look at the names as sometimes the numbers did get in the way with the name.

Next in our series is Liverpool

Ouch is the first thing that goes through my mind when seeing so many big red lines in this graphic. This is completely wrong.

But let us first talk of the green lines. And then we see that Moss seemed to have a soft spot for Liverpool last season. A very unusual big positive bias for his standards. Also a ref that seems to have a good positive bias for Liverpool was Friend.

And we have two other refs with a small positive bias. Webb might be a surprise for Liverpool fans and Taylor is the other one.

Now let us move to the negative refs for Liverpool and there are quite a lot of them.

Marinner and Mason are not really a big problem for Liverpool when we look at their low negative bias numbers.

But when we see the numbers from Oliver, Atkinson, Dowd, Jones and Halsey they are completely bad. This looks very bad for Liverpool when they were around.

Now we will try to see if we can find similar numbers the season before.

And now we see some other numbers and a more positive image overall for Liverpool. Much more positive refs for them and certainly compared to last season.

One thing is for sure however. Jones had the biggest negative bias against Liverpool in the season 2011/2012 and this has continued in the last season. So he surely is not the best friend of Liverpool.

A ref that was positive for Liverpool in those two seasons was Taylor.

Halsey…come on don’t have a go at him, he spent time and huge effort earning Fergies respect. Mike Dean is a Liverpool fan, he obviously cannot take charge of their games, but wonder if he is inclined to help from a distance, hopefully if this is the case, no more being nice to the Spuds for him